Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Harry Shum Jr., Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Jason Scott Lee, Veronica Ngo, Eugenia Yuan, Roger Yuan, JuJu Chan Szeto, Chris Pang
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Director: Yuen Shun-Yee, Chan Siu-Wah, Ni Haifeng

 

Making a sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon some fifteen years after the original was sort of a strange idea. It obviously had precedent in films like Drunken Master and Tron, and being the fourth book in a quintet of novels, there was still at least one sequel (and three possible prequels) that could be mined out of the source material. The Hong Kong wire-fu bug that had started with The Matrix and continued with the first CTHD and continued up through the The Forbidden Kingdom (among others) had calmed down in Hollywood by that point. By 2010, most wire-assisted martial arts were saved for Marvel movies, which integrated that sort of action with CGI-generated superpower attacks.

Nonetheless, as CTHD had told a compelling story, we martial arts fan initially embraced the idea to see more of it. But then we learned that it was being produced by Netflix…and directed by Yuen Woo-Ping…in English. Although Netflix has done its share of popular series and original films, they haven’t really gotten a hang of adapting Asian IPs into products for Western consumption. In fact, it’s become a meme that the worst thing that can happen to a Japanese manga is for it to get a Netflix live-action adaptation. They did a good job with Marco Polo (or so I’m told), but that seems to be a bit of an outlier. So, strike one!

Then there was the announcement of Yuen Woo-Ping as the director. As we already know, Sifu Yuen had been the first film’s action director, which had gotten him all sorts of award and accolades around the world. However, his work as a director is a bit more uneven than his work as an action director and fight choreographer. Oh sure, he’s directed more than his fair share of genre classics back in the late 70s and early 80s, but his work from the mid-80s onward is a bit less consistent. Iron Monkey and Tai Chi Master are both wire-fu classics; Heroes Among Heroes is less so (at least from my perspective). Tai Chi II had some good fights, but suffered from a generic plot and a few moments of terrible wirework. His last directorial effort before being hired onto CTHD: SOD was True Legend, which I liked a lot, but a lot of people hate it for good reason: the third act has very little to do with the first two, introducing new (Caucasian) villains just because films like Fearless did that. So, guarded optimism with that particular choice.

But then you get the bit about the movie being filmed in English. Y’know, by 2016, you’d think that people would be warier about “white-i-fying” an Intellectual Property whose first entry was filmed in Mandarin. Moreover, if Yuen Woo-Ping’s dramatic abilities have generally lacked consistency, why in the hell would you hire him to make a movie in a language that he doesn’t speak? Especially when that movie is the sequel to one of the most important martial arts films not only of the past two decades or so, but of all time, too? Yeah, this was starting to look like a disaster with each new detail.

The film is set some 18 years or so following the events of the first movie. The Green Destiny sword has remained in the stewardship of Sir Te[1] while Yu Shu-Lien (a returning Michelle Yeoh) has spent her years in quiet solitude. While all that has been going on, the White Lotus Clan, led by Hades Dai (Jason Scott Lee, of Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story), has been threatening the other clans in the jiang hu (or Martial World), vying for supremacy over all. At the urging of a mysterious blind woman (Eugenia Yuan, The Man with the Iron Fists 2 and Revenge of the Green Dragons), Hades Dai places his sights on the Green Destiny, the only sword which might be capable of defeating him.

Meanwhile, Yu Shu-Lien has come out of seclusion to pay her respects to Sir Te, who has recently passed on. On her way to Beijing, she is ambushed by a group of bandits belonging to Hades Dai’s clan, led by Wei Fang (Harry Shum Jr., of Crazy Rich Asians and Revenge of the Green Dragons). Shu-Lien is able to repel them with the help of a mysterious stranger, who flees her presence before she can thank him. Once at Sir Te’s estate, Shu-Lien meets a mysterious woman named Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo, of Detective Chinatown 2 and The Day Shift). Snow Vase successfully stops Wei Fang from stealing the Green Destiny and becomes Shu-Lien’s student afterward.

Knowing that Hades Dai and his forces will come back for both the sword and for Wei Fang, Shu-Lien sends out the Bat Signal for backup from the jiang hu underworld. Help comes in the form a bunch of fighters led by Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen). Silent Wolf was not only Shu-Lien’s benefactor in the previous scuffle with Wei Fang and his men, but he’s actually Shu-Lien’s long-thought-dead fiancée! Yup, the same guy for respect of whom Shu-Lien never returned her love for Li Mu-Bai. Apparently, he was defeated in personal combat with Hades Dai many years before, but survived and went into seclusion without telling anyone. Now, Shu-Lien has to figure out her feelings for her former betrothed while figuring out what the deal is with Snow Vase and protecting the Green Destiny from Hades Dai’s assassins, led by extremely deadly Mantis (Veronica Ngo, of Furie and Clash).

When Wang Hui-Lung, Tsai Kuo-Jung and James Schamus adapted Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for film back in 2000, they knew that they were making a movie that would appeal not only to local audiences, but to audiences around the world. As such, they smartly pushed the Martial World elements of the story into the background, hinting that these characters lived in a more violent and turbulent place, but not dwelling on it. Instead, they focused on the love stories and the theme of a woman being able to choose her own destiny, which kept the movie more focused and allowed director Ang Lee to focus on five main characters.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, under of the pen of The Forbidden Kingdom’s John Fusco, does quite the opposite, relegating the love story to a footnote status and focusing on the Jiang Hu aspects of the story. Now you have different martial clans (supposedly) vying for supremacy through mythical weapons and martial arts skills that border on witchcraft. That means that you have a lot more characters (and their backstories) to follow, which makes the narrative a little muddled. Much like the wuxia movies on the 1990s, this movie tries to fit in as many characters from the source material as possible and fill it with fight scenes, meaning that some characters are going to get the short shrift and some subplots are going to be resolved almost magically. The former flaw applies specifically to Hades Dai, who is supposed to be this evil clan leader, but we don’t see very much of him here, especially when it comes to doing Martial World stuff. The latter can be seen in the treatment of Shu Lien/Silent Wolf relationship quandary, which resolves itself with but a couple of soulful looks.

Yuen Woo-Ping seems to have left the action duties to his brother, Yuen Shun-Yee, along with Chan Siu-Wah and Ni Haifeng. Yuen Shun-Yee has been choreographing fight scenes by his brothers’ side since the late 1970, and recently had the same position in the YWP-directed Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy. Chan Siu-Wah has been on Yuen Woo-Ping’s stunt team since the 1990s, assisting Sifu Yuen in films like The Banquet and the last two Ip Man films. Ni Haifeng went on to choreograph Blade of Flower, so there’s one more YWP protégé running around out there.

Their action is heavy on the wires, as one might expect. I think there was an expectation for the fights to be heavily wired, because even Donnie Yen is being swung around on cords to do the sort of kicks he never needed assistance to do before. Then again, he was 53 when he made this, so maybe he’s just slowing down. The first showdown between Shu Lien, Silent Wolf, and the bandits is probably the best fight in the film. The following fight at Sir Te’s estate is essentially a rip-off of CTHD’s first showdown between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi. The movie gives us a hoped-for “Ip Man vs. Bruce Lee” fight, although it’s a bit shorter than I would have liked. And that really sums the action for me: there is some good choreography at times, but the fights are generally too short. There are more of them than the first film, but there are no classics. In the end, Vietnamese actress Veronica Ngo steals the show as the ass-kicking female assassin, Mantis. She’s almost unstoppable in this film; I would have liked to have seen a climax between her and Michelle Yeoh.

If this movie had been a stand-alone adaptation of Iron Knight, Silver Vase[2], it would have been a pretty solid wuxia film. As a sequel to Ang Lee’s renowned masterpiece, it pales in comparison. John Fusco’s script needed a bit more fine-tuning and tightening and YWP should have tried to give the film at least one all-time classic fight. You usually can count on him for that, even in his post-Matrix wire-fu days. Maybe the bean-counters at Netflix got in the way with some BS commentary like, “surveys show that 85% of American viewers don’t like long fight scenes in their movies.” I dunno. Even the heavily-flawed True Legend had that wonderful one-on-one fight between Vincent Zhao and Andy On. Whatever. It’s a decent wuxia movie overall, and certainly better than some of the stuff I’ve seen coming out the PRC, but I don’t think it deserves to be attached to the original CTHD.

---

[1] - Whom the characters comment is the Emperor’s brother. That detail, along with the confirmation that Li Mu Bai had been an instructor at his household, proves my theory that in the 1967 film Rape of the Sword had done an inversion of the source material and made the Li Mu Bai stand-in to be the villain, while the Jade Fox equivalente was the heroine!

[2] - The final insult to injury that this film made was to release a novelization based on the script! Why not just finance an official translation of Wang Dulu’s novel? Dummies!

Rape of the Sword (1967)

Rape of the Sword (1967)[1]
Chinese Title: 盜劍
Translation: Steal(ing) Sword

 

Starring: Li Li-Hua, Li Ching, Kiu Chong, Chen Hung-Lieh, Tien Feng, Tang Ti, Lee Wan-Chung, Yang Chi-Ching
Director: Griffin Yueh
Action Director: n/a

In his notorious work Asian Cult Cinema, author Thomas Weisser refers to this as a “martial arts musical” and highlights it as one of the better old school movies from the late 60s – early 80s. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a musical: there are two songs, one of which is played over the main character walking through the wilderness. Only once do characters break out into song, although it’s in the traditional Chinese Opera style, as opposed to what we might expect in a Hollywood musical, complete with a choreographed dance routine and whatnot. But yeah, anyone who has ever heard that this is a “musical” and imagined some Cronenbergian concoction of The Sound of Music with The One-Armed Swordsman, can rest assured (or lament) that this ain’t it.

The movie opens with two men about to duel. One of them is a stocky fellow named Han (Tang Ti, of One-Armed Swordsman and The Knight of Knights), who is trying to convince his opponent, one of his martial brothers, to hand over the Green Frost Sword. His reasoning is that the Prince—in this case, it would be the Emperor’s brother (and I think this is set in the Song Dynasty)--wants the sword and has promised official ranks to whomever gives it to him. Han’s brother refuses on the grounds that his master said to keep the sword within clan always, to which Han responds, “Why? He’s dead!” Anyway, Han kills his brother-in-arms and makes off with the sword.

Some time later, we go the court of Prince Wu Yi (Lee Wan-Chung, of Broken Oath and The Deadly Knives), where he’s showing off the sword to his advisors and whomever else is at the palace at the moment. Some time during the “demonstration,” the good General Zhong Ki (Tien Feng, of Fist of Fury and The Young Master) shows up with his daughter, Jiao Long (Li Ching, of Killers Five and King Eagle), in tow. It doesn’t take long for the Prince’s godson, Lu Tian-Xia, to take notice of Miss Jiao Long and want her hand in marriage. Unfortunately, Lu Tian-Xia is played by Chen Hung-Lieh, who played Jade Faced Tiger in Come Drink With Me, we the viewers know he’s no good. Even Jiao Long comments to her dad that “he looks like a vampire.”

Unfortunately for Jiao Long, being the (god)son of the Emperor’s brother comes with its perks in that most officials below you are willing to do anything you ask them, like consent to giving their daughter’s hand in marriage. Before Jiao Long knows it, she’s engaged to the (admittedly) shifty-looking fellow, who hasn’t done anything wrong yet, but just looks like a conniving villain. At this point, Jiao Long’s lady-in-waiting, Geng Liu Nang (Li Li-Hua, of The Boxer Rebellion and The Goddess of Mercy), is not only a powerful martial artist, but also of the widow of the poor sucker from the first scene. That means that she not only wants to get the Green Frost Sword back, but she wants Han’s life while she’s at it. Han has since been promoted to “Instructor” in Prince Wu Yi’s palace, but is absent from the palace at the moment. Liu Nang uses that “breach” in the palace’s security to steal the sword and whisk Jiao Long away.

By this point, Lu Tian-Xia already suspects that Liu Nang is a martial artist. Sucks for him, but confronting her outright results him her almost killing him with the PALM OF DEATH! At that point, Instructor Han returns from wherever he was to and takes it upon himself to get the sword back. He gets it back, but both Miss Geng and Jiao Long are able to escape with their lives. At this point, Miss Geng starts teaching Jiao Long kung fu…and trust me, she’s going to need it.

Okay, let’s see: you have a super-powerful green sword, which belonged to a clan in the Martial World and is now in the position of a government official (but is constantly getting stolen)…you have the daughter of an official is roped into an arranged marriage with someone that most women would probably find repulsive…but said young lady would rather be part of the Jianghu world…not to mention her lady-in-waiting is secretly a martial artist.

Yeah, that sounds a lot like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A lot of people, including CTHD choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, feel that this was a (loose) adaptation of Wang Dulu’s famous novel. Jiao Long would be the equivalent to Zhang Ziyi’s Jen, while Li Li-Hua’s Geng Liu Nang is an unexpected composite of Michelle Yeoh’s Yu Shu Lien and Cheng Pei-Pei’s Jade Fox (!). As the latter was the villain(ess) of CTHD, that leaves the antagonist role here to Chen Hung-Lieh’s character, whose counterpart was the barely-glimpsed Gou (played by Karl Li). And, if you really want to be radical, you can suppose that Chow Yun-Fat’s Li Mu-Bai was channeled into the villainous Instructor Han. After all, both men hail from the clan which claimed ownership of the Green Frost (or Destiny) sword and both men handed it over to government officials.

That last bit is probably pushing it, however. There is also a martial artist, Lo Yi Hu (Kiu Chong, of The Trail of the Broken Blade and Heroic Sword) who is the head of a clan of bandits whom Jiao Long falls in love with. That would be the equivalent of Chang Chen’s Lo Xiao Hu from CHTD—they even have similar names! As Lo Yi Hu in Rape of the Sword is also a martial brother of Geng Liu Neng, I’m guessing that he is supposed to be a composite of sorts of both Li Mu Bai and Lo Xiao Hu. The Wikipedia entry for Rape of the Sword suggests that when this film was made, the Cultural Revolution was underway in China, where Wang Dulu lived. As a result, there would have been no way for the Shaws to contact him about signing over the film rights to his story. As a result, they did adapt the material, but did so loosely enough--even changing the dynasty from the Qing to the Song (about 600-700 years earlier)—that it wouldn’t have been outright plagiarism. But if Yuen Woo-Ping (who plays an extra in this) thinks it was an adaptation, I’m guessing he’d heard stuff around the set.

All that aside, is Rape of the Sword any good? I thought it was pretty good. It certainly looks nice and the late Li Ching (not to be confused with the other Shaw Brothers starlet, Ching Li) is easy on the eyes. The action is rather dated; the influence of the Peking Opera is undeniable here. But while Peking Opera graduates in the 1970s transformed their training into long, complex and marvelously-acrobatic demonstrations of martial prowess, the fighting here looks mounted in a way that you would expect for the stage and not the movie camera. Where later films would transform Peking Opera into something more epic, this is just Peking Opera stage fighting on film. Some of the later swordfights start approaching the level of Come Drink with Me, but otherwise, I’m not even sure the action ranks up there with Hollywood swashbucklers from the 1950s. I think most of its value lies in its connections with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon than with its merits…but then again, I might just be a decadent Philistine who wanted something closer to a Chang Cheh bloodbath.

And what happened to the sequel that this movie promised?

 

---

[1] - Despite the title, there is no “rape” as we know the term today (no swords were sheathed or unsheated against their will). However, the Latin roots of “rape” are in the word “rapere” which means “to seize.” In Middle English, the verb “to rape” meant “violently seize property,” which is a bit more in line with what happens in this film. Now, if that’s what the guys who came up with the English title were thinking, I have no idea.

Jiu Jitsu (2020)

Jiu Jitsu (2020)

Starring: Alain Moussi, Nicolas Cage, Frank Grillo, Tony Jaa, JuJu Chan, Rick Yune, Eddie Steeples, Marie Avgeropoulos, Marrese Crump, Ryan Tarran
Director: Dimitri Logothetis
Action Director: Supoj Khaowwong

 

Jiu Jitsu is such a bait-and-switch title for the film we actually got. If you just here the name, you’ll imagine some sort of MMA drama like Warrior, or a less savory approach to the material, like the works of Hector Ecchavaria. When the Project was announced in late 2018, it was established from the outset that the film would be a sci-fi actioner. A strange title for a martial arts movie in a sci-fi setting, but whatever. It would probably be in the vein of Heatseeker, we all thought. I enjoyed Heatseeker, it’s low budget notwithstanding, so an updated version of that would have been fun.

About three months after the production was announced, we were given an official plot synopsis sounded like it was a stealth remake of Mortal Kombat, replacing “Outworlders” with regular alien invaders. I then saw the trailer at about the time the movie came out in the States, and the result was something a little closer to the Predator franchise. Likewise, the early reviews seemed to focus on the similarities between the movie and Predator, which seems like a daft combination to be sure. So, what exactly is Jiu Jitsu?

We open with a soldier, Jake (Alain Moussi, of the recent Kicboxer reboot films), getting chased through the forests of Myanmar (played by Cypress) by an invisible opponent firing shuriken at him. He eventually gets hit twice in the back as he reaches a cliff, falling into the water and hitting his head on a rock. He miraculously doesn’t drown, but floats along the river until he is rescued by Nicolas Cage and handed over to a fisherman and his wife. They in turn take him to a local American military base (!) in order to avoid trouble.

When Jake finally regains consciousness, he is interrogated by Army Intelligence officer Myra (Marie Avgeropoulos, of Tracers and the series “The 100”). Although Jake learns that Uncle Sam has set up shop in Myanmar in order to steal its plutonium deposits, he himself is suffering from amnesia so the Army doesn’t get anything out of him. One day, a fighter named Kueng (Tony Jaa, of Ong Bak and Triple Threat) shows up at the outpost and kicks the holy shit out of all of the soldiers, rescuing Jake, whom he seems to know.

Kueng takes Jake to meet a bunch of other martial artists, including Harrigan (Frank Grillo, The Purge: Anarchy and Beyond Skyline) and Carmen (Juju Chan Szeto, of Fist of the Dragon and Savage Dog). The latter appears to have been a relationship with Jake, which really takes him aback. Before he can really learn what’s going on, they are attacked by an invisible force, followed by the arrival of the American military. The martial artists are more than capable of fending for themselves against the Yanks, although Jake gets himself recaptured by Myra. At this point, Jake remembers enough to warn the Army to get the heck out of dodge, since whatever is out there in the jungle is more than enough for the military. So, Myra, Jake and Colonel Sands (Rick Yune, of The Fast and the Furious and Die Another Day) take a platoon out into the jungle to investigate what’s going on. The platoon is quickly slaughtered by an unknown enemy and Jake, while escaping, finds the underground hideout of Wylie, played by Nicolas Cage.

Wylie fills Jake on the plot: Thousands of years ago, an immortal alien lifeform known as as “Brax” came to the Earth when a passing comet opened a portal to his world. He gave the world a gift: Jiu Jitsu. However, in exchange for this gift, Brax made an ultimatum: every six years (when the comet returned), mankind would have to make an “offering” of its nine best martial artists in order to placate Brax’s desire to fight. Otherwise, he’ll just start killing people indeterminately. As it stands, Brax has never been defeated, so the nine best fighters are basically sacrificed for the Greater Good every six years. Apparently, Jake was one of the nine fighters for this most recent offering, but ended up trying to flee, which is where we met him at the beginning of the film. The question is: will he be man enough to face his destiny and take on Brax, even when all the odds are against him?

As of January 2023, Jiu Jitsu holds a 2.9 rating at the Internet Movie Database, which is extremely low. I can’t help but wonder how much that has to do with the cognitive dissonance generated by the disconnect between the film’s title (and one’s expectations based on said title) and the actual storyline, which is a strange amalgamation of Predator and Mortal Kombat. I also think it has a lot to do with the treatment of the term of Jiu Jitsu, which in this case, is used as an umbrella term for “Martial Arts” in general, as opposed to the Japanese martial art developed in the 16^th century. Although there is a fair amount of Jiu Jitsu and ground fighting in this movie, there are other styles on display, ranging from tae kwon do to Muay Thai. I don’t think it was a good idea to use Jiu Jitsu in the title, no matter how many holds and breaks Alain Moussi performs in his fights.

Jiu Jitsu is an odd duck, no doubt about it. As I mentioned before, melding Predator with Mortal Kombat seems counterintuitive. The explanation for the MK approach to the alien’s modus operandi is a Chariots of the Gods retcon of history that suggests that Asian Martial Arts as we know them were given to us by extraterrestrials. The problem with that particular approach is that one character states that the whole Brax “tournament” has been going on for 2000 years. But martial arts had existed in China, including open-handed combat, weapons and wrestling, since the Shang Dynasty, almost 4000 years ago. So the timelines don’t really line up.

The film does have a very good cast, including the ever-meme friendly Nicolas Cage as Wylie, a fighter who’d dodged his destiny in the showdown with Brax six years prior. He plays his role with the expected Cage quirkiness, albeit stops short of going into his infamous overacting extremes. Alain Moussi is pretty one note in his role, but does well enough in his fight scenes to justify his presence in the film. Frank Grillo isn’t given a whole lot to work with, but he has a likable everyman feeling about him, even in a film like this. The only actor whose inclusion is questionable is Rick Yune as Colonel Sands: he is introduced by the characters talking to him, though he himself is off camera. Later, when the Army takes to the jungle, he just shows up in the scene. Why all the secrecy with regards to his character in the previous scenes? I suppose something was left on the editing room floor.

The action was staged by Supoj Khaowwong and Alain Moussi, the former being known for his work on the two Kickboxer reboot movies, which starred Moussi. I thought the fights were fairly solid for the most part. The best moments went to Tony Jaa, giving us one of his best fighting performances since the passing of Panna Rittikrai. His intro fight at the army base plays like a sequel to his infamous one-take restaurant fight from The Protector, with the camera following him as he makes his way around the base, beating up anyone who gets in his way. That same fight then involves Moussi, at which point it switches into first-person perspective á la The Villainess.

Marrese Crump, who stole the show in Tom Yum Goong 2, plays one of the Chosen Ones and does some nice work with a metal pole that can break off into two mini-spears. His kicks are fast and powerful, not to mention very agile. Tae kwon do champ Juju Chan doesn’t get to fight a lot, but she does impress with her nunchaku skills early on against the American soldiers. Don’t expect much from Frank Grillo: he fights some guys with two-fisted daggers, but that’s about it. The other Chosen Fighters are played by Thai model (?) June Sasitorn, Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert Rigan Machado, and veteran stuntman Dan Rizzuto, whose choreographer credits include Boss Level and Wu Assassins. Their fights, however, are short and not very flashy.

Brax the “Poetic Warrior” (to quote Nicolas Cage’s character) is played by Ryan Tarran, a veteran Hollywood stuntman. His credits include Alien: Covenant and Thor: Ragnarok, where he doubled for Chris Hemsworth on occasion. Brax fights with a mixture of jiu jitsu, sword fighting and spear fighting. His throwdowns with Marrese Crump, Nicolas Cage (and his stunt double) and finally Alain Moussi are satisfying for the most part. I was satisfied with the action on display, even though there was a bit too much slow-mo. The editing was clean for the most part, except when needed to hide Cage’s double. I don’t think the film should have been called Jiu Jitsu, from both an action and story standpoint. What would have been better? The Martial Arts? Bushido? Bujutsu? The Art of Fighting? The Warrior Arts?